How to put a free date stamp on my photos

Si KingstonUpdated February 21, 2017

At one time, all photos had to be processed and printed from film. The cost and time to complete the process of printing photos from film kept many people from taking too many photographs. With the popularity of digital cameras, many of us find ourselves taking a lot more pictures since images can be easily downloaded and stored on a computer. With so many photos, it is sometimes hard to remember when they were all taken. You can put a free date stamp on digital photos so that you will always know when they were taken.

Enter set-up on the digital camera. Often, this is accomplished by moving the mode dial on the top of the camera or by hitting the menu button. You may then need to select the Settings or Camera menu. From there, you should be able to access the date stamp. Many cameras will allow you to select how the date is superimposed. Sony Cybershot cameras, for example, will superimpose either the day and time or the month, day and year on each photo.

Add a date stamp to a photo manually. There are several free image editing software programs such as Paint, GIMP and Picasa, which will allow you to add your own time stamp to a digital photo. The advantage of manually applying the date stamp is that you can place the stamp wherever you want on the photo and choose a font style and size that works well with the photo.

Put a free date stamp on the photos with software such as SafeCopy, Change Case and Time Stamp. The advantage of using a software program is that it will allow you to download all photos without the date stamp superimposed. You can then make a copy of those non-stamped photos. The software program will read the EXIF file attached to the photo, which contains the date information, and can then add the date stamp to the copies, and the originals will be free of any dates that can blemish the photo.

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About the Author

Si Kingston has been an online content contributor since 2004, with work appearing on websites such as MadeMan. She is a professional screenwriter and young-adult novelist and was awarded the Marion-Hood Boesworth Award for Young Fiction in 2008. Kingston holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Mills College.